This summer will yield a notable first at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, where Billy Joel will play the ballpark’s first-ever concert on July 26.
Home to the Baltimore Orioles since 1992, Oriole Park at Camden Yards has gone throughout its history without hosting a concert, with a 1995 mass by Pope John Paul II representing perhaps the ballpark’s most significant non-baseball event. The ballpark is now preparing to open its doors to a concert, however, as the Orioles announced on Thursday that they will partner with Live Nation to present Joel at Oriole Park this summer.
“As an entertainment company bringing world class sports, music, and other diverse events to the live venues we manage and to our multimedia television, digital, and radio platforms, there is no greater opportunity than to bring a true music legend in Billy Joel to the ballpark and into our community,” John Angelos, Orioles Executive Vice President, said in a press statement. “Billy Joel and Oriole Park at Camden Yards are leaders across the entertainment world in selling tickets, driving tourism, and creating one-of-a-kind memories, and the Orioles are thrilled to make Camden Yards home to an iconic artist who generations of Americans have grown up with and who is still setting records today.”
While there have been previous attempts to bring concerts to Oriole Park, none had materialized. (The Baltimore Sun has a more in-depth look at this history.) The neighboring M&T Bank Stadium–home to the NFL’s Ravens, and where Joel played his most recent Baltimore concert in 2015–has landed many of the city’s large outdoor concerts.
Joel has been a fixture in the MLB ballpark summer concert slate in recent years, and that trend will continue in 2019. Aside from Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Joel’s schedule includes upcoming shows at Texas’s Globe Life Park, Boston’s Fenway Park, Colorado’s Coors Field, Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park, Milwaukee’s Miller Park, and Arizona’s Chase Field.
According to a press release from the Orioles, the team’s charitable foundation “will donate a portion of the proceeds from the concert to support music and arts education programs for kids in Maryland and across the Orioles’ regional territory.”